


Try, Try Again

by thiefyy



Category: Borderlands
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Developing Relationship, M/M, Manipulation, Plot With Porn, Post-Tales, WIP, mental manipulation, unhealthy relationship
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-29
Updated: 2016-07-05
Packaged: 2018-05-21 07:34:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6043420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thiefyy/pseuds/thiefyy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rhys decides he can (maybe) give Jack one more shot.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> First Borderlands and Ao3 fic ever, I hope I don't screw it up. Thanks for giving it a whirl. (ﾍﾟ◇ﾟ)」

It was different this time, being an inactive AI. His first experience was spent unawares in Nakayama’s thoughtful pocket, like some sort of fucked up pre-natal thing. Jack remembered, but only vaguely, and it was the uncertainty that landed him on his knees in his destroyed office, begging Rhys to keep him away from it. He hadn’t known, and he hadn’t wanted to know.   
  
Now the days that stretched into weeks that stretched into months were a sleep that he couldn’t rouse from, an emptiness that he couldn’t even hope to break. Unconscious but,  _ not  _ all at once. After god knows how long trapped within his own coding, after so much that time itself became just a sick abstract of a never ending purgatory, Jack knew he had been right to be afraid.

He'd been wrong about one thing, though.

This was definitely not nothing. This was  _ everything _ . All at once, in a million different ways.

There was a lot of thinking, or a sick parody of what thinking might actually be. As an unconventional mass of codes and programs of memories already gone, trying to add new ones was messy as shell. Already, conversations blurred between what was said, and what he'd fantasized in its stead. Terrifying, aimless, confusing... those words could only scratch the surface of this experience.

Or was  _ that _ just a fabrication?

Years as a programmer, and he’d thought he understood codes. But there was something new about the whole thing when you—were one. Some kind of spiritual shit mixed in there and tripped him up with every step of trying to assess what he was doing.

Right now (whatever "now" even was), he was trying to sift through one coded memory in particular. It was one he visited most often, the final in his banks, in fact, partially corrupted but still the most raw. He'd tried every other memory at least three times; this was the one that gave him the best response. The one that stuck. And the one that he really, really wished wouldn't.

_ I'm sorry, Jack. It's over. _

Decrypting those last words had been a nightmare. Jack had made every effort to twist it, to make the words sound angry or harsh or hateful, but no. He'd tried to fit every dirty word in the book to the sentence, but again, no. There it was, apologetic and pained and full of disappointment. It was... gross. But real. Stupidly real. He didn't have any memories like it. Maybe if he'd had the memory of dying alone in a volcano, he'd be able to try that one on for size. Regrettably, he didn't have that option.

(Had it even been a volcano? It was down to a volcano alone, a snowy mountain alone, drifting in space alone, or on a beach getting sexed to death. Guess which one was favored.)

Anyway, sensory without any nerves was an honest to god disgusting process. With no ears, hearing came from—from the core? It was weird. There was no particular direction of origin that he could detect, either, so it surrounded. Assaulted. Assaulted was a better word. No, overwhelmed. 

God.

So here it was.  _ I'm sorry, Jack. _ Over and over, straight to the core. It was the only grounding he had, and as much as it downright sucked, he needed it. On it played.

It's over.

Jack.

Jack. Jack. Jack. Jack. Jack. Jack.

" _ Jack. _ "

He had thought about what it might be like, to get out. Or at least, he had tried to think about it, once. Fantasies were utter shambles here, especially when they had no tangible memories to grasp onto. The first time he'd imagined it—imagined getting out, throttling the traitorous prick, taking his stupid body, and  _ somehow _ salvaging what was left of Helios—the fabricated thought became so rampant that it actually began to corrupt actual memories, churning inside the coding until he began to think that maybe, it wasn't a fantasy. That one had been a bitch to piece back together, and far too much progress had been lost, but at least he learned once and for all that fantasies corrupt. Hope was a virus.

So it came as quite the shocker when the call of his name wasn't from some fuzzy memory—when it wasn't some distant form of a little shit standing in front of him, but one that lived and breathed—and when Jack came to the realization that suddenly, everything else was a real and tangible thing, and he was the one that wasn't real, digitized and translucent.

Huh.

"...Jack?"

The familiar figure stared at him with an expectant look that Jack wasn't entirely sure was fair, given the situation. Ree. Reese. Rhys. Rhysie. Yeah, okay.

"Y... y..." Words were so much  _ harder _ than he'd remembered.

Rhys was staring at him with—with something that almost looked like how he had gazed at him in memory. Sad, but not sad for himself. Sad for Jack. It was called pity.

Freaking pity.

"Y-you... you..."

Pity. Did that piss Jack off. It felt good to be pissed off, too. It felt good to be anything beside deadpanned nostalgic. And the more he looked at Rhys and that dumbass look on his dumbass face, the stronger it felt. It opened the floodgates to a surge of something more than just coding, and Jack made the very easy decision to run with it.

"You... slag eating, bullshitting, bandit loving—"

"Oh, thank god."

"—lying little traitor!"

The asshat looked relieved. Which pissed Jack off plenty, too, but it was way better than pitying. He looked different, too, now that Jack had a chance to look at him. Sharper, for sure, dressed in all black and like he actually gave a damn. There was a yellow to his ECHO eye—which was quite honestly way more flattering than his blue had been—and a shiny as hell chrome finish to what parts of the robot arm Jack could see.

All of these changes in the bastard, and Jack was still his goddamn digital self.

Rhys was silent, and Jack could only hope that it was because at least one of his words had stuck. The two sized each other up, a usually talkative pair stilled from the concentration, the uneasiness. Like a game of silent chicken. Naturally, Rhys would be the first to speak.

“So. Yeah. You—obviously know who I am. Do you know where you are?”

Something about it just—got to Jack. It could have been Rhys’s comical new digs that made him look like an even bigger phony than before. It could have been that he was actually asking the AI, who had been unconscious for Christ only knows how many days (probably quite a few; it must have taken the little shit some time to go through that puberty burst of his), if he had even the slightest idea of where he was. Or it could have been the fact that  _ sensory _ happened so much so fast. Whatever it was, it drove a chuckle out from his throat, trickling his lips, until he was full on guffawing. Bent over, knee slapping guffawing. He’d have lost the air in his lungs, if they had any functionality.

Usually, this was the kind of erratic behavior that got him a leg up in situations, but Rhys’s composure remained. One robotic arm folded over a flesh one over his chest, and he waited patiently for Jack to stop. Somehow, that just seemed all the more hysterical, but in a less funny way this time. The laugh that had been boisterous a moment ago was now just a little more forced, steadying down into a low, emphasized and elongated chuckle.

“Ahah, seriously. Cupcake,” Jack’s neck craned to the side as if to crack. Right. Digital bodies don’t do that. Get it together. It put him in an even worse humor. “You really, really should have reconsidered putting me back into your body.”

Jack’s fingers gave an experimental flex, but the tense arm on Rhys’s torso didn’t move. Okay, he suspected that, and decided not to let it phase him just yet. “ Because if you think you can get rid of me again so easy, you have another thing coming, Rhysie. And now that I'm  _ thoroughly _ pissed, arm control or no, I'm going to back into your head like a goddamn huntsman on steroids, exploit whatever I can, and take you down in every agonizing way I can possibly concoct. I—"

Jack had more to say. He had  _ so _ much more to say. But suddenly, Rhys was adjusting something against his port, and the AI's grip on reality suddenly felt that much more obscure. Static filled his vision and warped his voice, and he realized that nothing coming out was remotely audible. The anger in his gut pooled sharply, and glitching teeth bared.

Rhys only smiled, and with another adjustment, the anchoring normalcy returned. Jack hated how much it relieved him. There was something in those mismatched eyes, something not there before. What the hell  _ was _ that?

"Look Jack, if you expected me to let you back into my head with no security provisions, you obviously learned nothing from trying to shove an endoskeleton into my body. I adapt and I fight back. And I can easily push you out again if I have to. But that's not why I brought you here, okay? I don't want to fight."

His head tilted, as if waiting for some retort, but Jack's lip were stubbornly sealed. For now, he was just content with a glare. The little poser just shrugged and went on.

"A lot's changed since you've been... gone, okay? Hyperion's dead, Jack. And I'm not sorry about that, but with the Atlas shares I scraped together from your office, I'm going to use them to rebuild it. I've already started to make progress. This facility you're in now? It was a mess when I got here.  _ I _ was a mess when I got here."

"What the hell do you want, Rhys." Jack felt tired all of a sudden. Being conscious was tiring.

"I want us to have what you promised, Jack. You and me, working together to change things. Even if it’s the company that needs to change first."

"Bull. Shit."

Rhys only shrugged again. "I don't care if you believe me, honestly. I'm not getting rid of you, but I'm not letting you get away with whatever you want, either. What I can promise you, though, is if you cooperate, you can get that body you've wanted." He contemplated his sentence structure for a moment. "Without—without my flesh, though. Because that was pretty gross."

"You don't trust me, but you're giving me a body." God, the more he talked, the more Jack wanted to get his fingers around that throat. He had a feeling Rhys's face would swell up nice and full when he did. It would be fitting for Rhys, dying with a big head.

"You help me, I help you."

Big and swollen and red, and whatever the new thing with his eyes were, it would slowly drain away as Jack forced the life right out of him. "Okay."

The eyes blinked, amusingly incredulous. "Okay?"

"How long?"

“How long…?”

“Until I get the body, dumbass.”

"Three months, at the most. I've already started on it."

"Then okay. I'll be the super computer to your evil genius, for three months."

As if he had a choice. If he said no, it was back in artificial intelligence limbo, and he was not going back there. Not again. There'd be time. In three months, he'd see that big head get fatally bigger. He could play nice until then.

Jack watched the cybernetically laced to all hell man brighten considerably at that, and for a second, he looked like the old Rhys. The malleable, stupid old Rhys.

"Okay then! Uh, I'll catch you up more... tooomorrow. I'm sure you're gonna need some time to get your bearings."

Bearings seemed the easy way to put it. Jack imagined that he’d need more than one day to get his “bearings” on anything, but it was a start. The faster he got his shit together, the faster he could start making plans. Good plans. Plans that would get him back on top. And that crap about Hyperion being dead? Rhys had another thing coming about that, too.

Handsome Jack  _ was _ Hyperion.

But hey, getting his shit together, that started with figuring out wherever the hell he was. With reluctance but interest, he stepped around the facility. Even if his connection with Rhys’s mind was far, far more limited, Jack could already feel the improvements that compensated for that. His range was stronger than two feet away from his host, for starters.

The room looked as generic as a generic Atlas warehouse on a generic piece of this stupid Pandoran rock could be. Atlas always seemed so dull in colorization, and this was no exception, dull and worn grey walls only emphasizing the better days past. It also happened to emphasize the emptiness, emptiness that Jack’s mind immediately began to compensate with seas of binary and code covering corners, plastering walls, and strewing across the floor. It was akin to Rhys’s ECHO eye function, if that function had never evolved from its C++ entropy.

Blanching, Jack turned away. Avoid looking at empty things. Got it. His mind was still too erratic to trust wandering in that kind of space, literal or otherwise.

Something to work on.

Rhys had made his way back to the desk by now, his movements slow and calculated, trying to be casual and attain some normality in a ridiculously abnormal situation. It was a modest little workspace, not dissimilar to Jack’s own. The aspiring CEO that could kept everything very neat and organized, but the stacked papers of crunched numbers were all visibly crunched themselves. There was some kinship in that.

Some.

Jack dissipated his body into a mass of pixels in Rhys’s line of sight, and had the fun watching the other jump as he flashed much, much closer to his side. Leaning his body forward, Jack murmured into his ear.   


“I’ve been thinking, kitten, this means we’re gonna be spending a lot of time together.”

From here, Jack had the best view of Rhys’s spine stiffening, of his hand tensing against the wood of the desk. He had an inkling of why, of course. He hadn’t been this close to Rhys in a… while, and he was feeling the difference, too. And with Rhys so rigid, he was trying his hardest not to stare at the neck his digitized lips hovered just over. Or, maybe that was the wrong way to go about it.

“Jack.” Rhys’s voice followed his body’s discomfort in suit. Perfect. This would be a cakewalk.

“Y’know, when we were looking for that Vault—and believe you me when I say we’ll be revisiting  _ that _ topic—we were always dashing off to some ridiculously far off place or dodging some goon or another belonging to the hot old chick.”

The other didn’t seem too keen on responding to him, but he didn’t stop him, either. Good.

“And it’s really too bad, honestly. Because I had some ideas about that hand of yours, when I had control.”

_ Now _ some gears turned. “When you—oh my god, Jack—”

Too late. Honestly, Rhys should have known better by now. “But I mean, we do have the time now, don’t we? And I’m  _ guessing _ all the privacy in the world.”

Where the new hoity toity Atlas CEO may have been a little stiff before, now he was a freaking board. It was just the right amount of incentive as Jack lowered his voice to that specific, low gravel, not too dissimilar from when he was about to enjoy the thrill of a good kill. And with his voice drizzled with predatory vocals, he drove on.

“I don’t think,” he drawled, “it’d be the worst way to get to know each other.”

“You cannot, in any way, shape, or form, be serious right now. You  _ just _ threatened to kill me.”

“And you just offered me a body. I won’t get anything from trying to kill you, and let’s be real, I want a  _ lot _ of things.” He didn’t want to talk about the last time they’d seen each other, about  _ that _ memory, but it suddenly seemed prudent. “I was desperate before, when I tried to kill you. I didn’t know what I had to live for. But what you’re saying? It makes sense. I could do it, and still get what I want. And what I want  _ right now _ is to get a good look at you moaning your new partner’s name while I jerk you off. So, whataya say?”

It was a lie, the bit about Helios. Truth be told, he had no idea why he’d tried to kill Rhys. He remembered the incident well enough thanks to his careful reviews, but even if he had  _ any _ desire to look that deep inside himself and figure out what was going on inside his head at that particularly fucked up moment in time, he’d need quite a bit of self-reflection to piece it together. Self-reflection he didn’t have. Or want.

But anyway, there it was. The thoughtful silence. The careful consideration. He knew that look from anyone, but from Rhys especially, it meant his control was practically signed and sealed.

“Just for a minute.”

And there it was. “Oh, that’s a good boy.”

A flesh hand touched the port on Rhys’s head, and with a quick adjustment, Jack felt the established connection like a breath of fresh air. His fingers flexed again, and delightfully, this time, the robotic digits followed. The kid watched with wide, expectant eyes as his own hand traced up a thigh…

…curled into a fist, and sucker punched him right in the kisser.

As easily as the command had come, it was gone with a flick of the port that coupled a cry of pain, and maybe a few curses thrown at him.

What Jack would have given to smell the blood that drizzled out of Rhys’s nose.

“You are  _ such _ an asshole.”

“Right back at ya, kiddo.”


	2. Chapter 2

When Jack first met Rhys, he’d had this—this feeling in his gut, not dissimilar to the one with Nisha and Wilhelm, even Athena. With them, he’d just known they’d be there, known that he could put some faith in them. Even when Athena made it clear that she’d have her foot out the door after Elpis, Jack was never worried about her coming back to bite him in the ass. He knew them, he trusted them. So when this wet behind the ears code monkey came into the picture, and that feeling came back to him, he remembered distinctly thinking maybe, this’d last.

Yeah, it didn’t.

And that was probably why it was so easy for Jack to complacently slip back into his default of schemer.

The punch in the face had been the first act of protest and while, admittedly, it didn’t do much towards his credibility—cooperation a put-on or no—it felt really, really satisfying.

Or at least, it felt satisfying until Rhys’s punishment involved plugging him into his new Time Out Console.

It was torture, that was what it was. Demeaning, slow torture. At first Jack had assumed it was a lucky break to be put right into a computer, ripe for exploring files and snatching up any intel possible to take Rhys down. That eagerness ended abruptly when he opened the first application and discovered only ECHO Paint. He opened another, and found a game of Truxican Hold Ems. That was it. ECHO Paint and a generic card game in the systems. That was the Time Out Console. When Rhys had returned to eject the AI after a day like that, he’d found that Jack had altered the game coding so the animation of excitable guns firing after every win aimed straight for a picture of the new CEO, coupled with the desktop background now sporting a banner of two stick figures, one with comically long legs that took up ninety percent of its body, and the other adorned with exaggerated abs, strangling the poor long legged freak. In case he had still not been able to understand the message, a few particularly crude phrasings were conveniently captioning the photo in that Hyperion yellow Jack loved so much.

When safely back in Rhys’s mind, Jack took shape at least ten feet away from him, daggers in his eyes shooting straight for the kid.

Rhys’s shoulders only shrugged non-committedly. “You punched me in the face.”

“You deactivated me for months.”

“You tried to shove a skeleton into my body, Jack.” His voice mixed with an incredulous laugh and the kind of bitterness you find in day old coffee. “I mean, seriously. What—what were you thinking?”

The question didn’t sound rhetorical, but Jack didn’t have an answer for him. He was still working on that one. It was weird, not remembering why he had done what he did, or why he couldn’t just make up something now. As if files were deleted and corrupted, 

When Rhys was met with only silence, he just sighed and let his shoulders slump. “I’m going to bed. We can try to actually get some work done tomorrow, but I didn’t bring you back to make things harder for me, remember? You agreed to this.”

Still, Jack had no words for him, and Rhys only pinched his nose as he staggered the both of them towards the bed. Although, from the way he dragged his feet, Jack had to wonder if his programming back in the other’s cybernetics was already starting to feel more like a ball and chain.

Huh.

Jack learned a few new things from watching Rhys sleep that night. One, no matter how much he pretended otherwise, it took him a hell of a lot longer to actually fall asleep than it had the week the AI had spent with him before. Two, he kept—looking for Jack every few minutes, as if he could somehow just disappear on him and walk away if Rhys didn’t keep checking on him. That was weird, but a little satisfying too, like he had been missed. Three, when Rhys actually slept, he was a loud ass snorer. Maybe Jack had just blocked that fact out before.

He stayed there for a while, watching him, trying not to find it too endearing, until he finally waved his hand and let his holographic ass dissipate inside Rhys’s mind. Even if he was formless there, he was active, not able to sleep, but at least rest. Sometimes dream.

The second day went better, and the days that followed afterwards only because Jack had no desire to go back to that freaking console. Rhys showed him what he had of Atlas and it… actually seemed sorta solid. For a currently one-man operation, anyway. Plus, it was kinda cute, watching the kid get all excited about it.

“I think Pandora has enough weapon manufacturers, and even with all the strengths of Hyperion, it severely lacked in on robotics. Not gonna—name names or anything.”

Claptraps. They were both thinking of Claptraps.

“But after having Gortys and Loader Bot on our side, I bet people could really thrive on having something like that, themselves. With the right programming, anyway.”

That was where Jack came in. Everyone had known about the Claptrap unit he’d upgraded, the only one that ever survived, and honestly, objectively, it was the best work anyone could have salvaged from an otherwise outmoded unit. Between Claptrap and… Frumpy? Dumpy? Rhys and Jack both had a knack for creating the useful out of the useless.

And speaking of the tiny floating tin can, Rhys still had the thing out and about, except now it had a goddamn family, reformatted and redesigned so that it had the same features of the original, but with a better targeting system, AI, and Rhys’s own personal paint jobs. That’s what he was selling now to a few side buyers, apparently, as if this first endeavor was a nod to the old Atlas as well as a big old welcome hug to the new. Whatever, it kept the lights of the facility on, and it supplied Rhys with the materials he needed to build the body he’d promised Jack. All Jack had to do was put up with the thing, and all its aptly named features tossing in the air clumsily every morning at the rounds.

Jack’s best moments of cooperation came out, unsurprisingly, when his body was discussed. Apparently that was Rhys’s big project, his own way of testing his skills as a specialist. He’d dictated precisely, “If I can do this, I can do anything,” a phrasing Jack wasn’t overly fond of, as if he were a do-it-yourself in a suburban home on Promethea, instead of Handsome fucking Jack. At least, apparently, this project was costing Rhys a pretty penny, which didn’t so much make Jack grateful as expectant. Duh, building a body from scratch would be a lot of money (he’d crunched the numbers himself before for a rainy day), but this was owed to him. This was why he was here, and once he could leave this kid’s head, once he could breathe and touch and really be able to feel again, well. The things he’d do.

As for the body itself, well, it was clear that Rhys was borrowing plenty of mechanics from various projects, from the electrodes for nerves with the help of his AI chip acting as a core processor (something something somatosensory cortex), to the New-U tech skin grafts and clothes, to the cyber optics that would be just like Rhys’s own. Hand-me-down tech aside, if it could all be effectively put together, it actually had a shot at working out.

So whether it was because Rhys seemed to actually know what he was doing in the business side of things, or because he finally had good hard evidence that his body was in the works, Jack was a semi-cooperative participant. In a matter of weeks, they were almost something akin to partners, with full routines and openly shared thoughts and ideas.

It was gonna be a real bummer to finally kill the guy.

Anyway, when stuck with one companion for a month, routines get exceptionally boring exceptionally fast, and Jack identified that he had a few options with this newfound boredom. One, he could act out. Two, he could use the boredom towards productivity. But after a week of going in and out of the damn console, the AI conceded that the second option might be more viable.

On the plus side, at least, that mural was looking more and more detailed every day.

It was a burning hot day when it happened. At least, Jack assumed it was a hot day. The generators had been acting up and Rhys had made the questionable decision to give it a day of rest. No computers, no lights while the sun was out, and very limited use of the air conditioning. The new CEO wasn’t quite sweating, but he was turning out to be distinctly lazy, limbs strewn out across the lone couch in the facility with paperwork balanced on his stomach and palm half open to a few reports he was filing. It made Jack feel slothish, himself, and even if it wasn’t really sitting when he didn’t have a real ass to park, he let it look like that anyway.

At some point in the afternoon, when the sun dipped through the windows, and when Rhys’s eyes got good and droopy, Jack took it as a cue to make his move.

“Rhys.”

A grunt met his light call, brown and golden eyes remained closed.

“I was just thinking, we sure have come a long way since I—well, since I punched you in the face.”

Another grunt, but it definitely tinged towards the sound of a full elongated groan this time. The corner of Jack’s lips twitched.

“But, y’know, what I said about us getting to know each other, that wasn’t all a ruse.”

“Hard to tell.”

Okay, well, getting actual verbal responses now, not bad. The eyes hadn’t opened up, though. That’d have to be fixed.

“And I want you to know, I’m not gonna ask for control of your arm again. I don’t want you to think that’s what I’m going for here.”

“Great.”

“I know, right? No, see, I was thinking we could start a trial run with something else. And I’m just spitballing here, so bear with me.”

Rhys’s single brown eye popped open with a single cutting and scrutinizing stare. And contact. “What do you want now.”

“I’m just thinking, we could have some real fun if you gave me access to your subsystems. We could—”

Jack would have continued, but he was more than a little rudely cut off by the sudden jolt of laughter from the cybernetic man, thin torso turning away with a sharp rejection. Jack could see every muscle tense like an animal prepared for an attack.

“No, Jack. No way. Not after what you did with my arm. Are you—you’re just unbelievable, you know that?”

“As a matter of fact,” Jack returned, sharp chin jutted out. “I do. But in a lot more ways than you realize right now, Rhysie.”

There wasn’t a sign of movement, that was the perk of being a hologram. One blink of the stunningly ordinary iris, and Jack was nose to nose. It might have been an attack, but Jack’s eyes held him in a gaze so intensely powerful that Rhys couldn’t so much as twitch his fingers in defense. Jack could see it, he could see the kid’s face crumple until—even just for a moment—he was that scared little stooge he’d always been.

Good.

Jack had no breath, yet it was quickened. His nose could phase through Rhys’s like nothing, but still it felt like flesh was pressed urgently against flesh. Rhys was a deer in the headlights, all from one easy show of power.

“I know what I’m suggesting. I know you don’t trust me. Whatever.”

This was different from before, different from the gentle nudging Jack had given Rhys for control of his arm. Hell, this was different from when he’d asked for access to his subsystems, long ago, in an Atlas facility that felt so much more foreign than the one right here, right now. This time, Jack wasn’t screwing around. He knew what he wanted, even if he’d only just pieced it together moments before.

“Let me in,” he whispered, with words so eerily familiar yet still profoundly new. “The things I could show you, pumpkin. Ooh-hoo, the places I’ll be able to touch you without lifting a single finger. Some robotic hand getting you off? That’s child’s play. Let. Me. In.”

Rhys’s jaw was set in a firm clench, mouth slammed shut, but they didn’t part to protest any of it. From where he sat, Jack could watch the linings of his throat pulse upwards, then thrust back down in one harsh bob.

Jack said no more, only watched. Only waited. HIs eyes never relented, but continued to bore into Rhys until he knew he could strike to his depths like he’d struck Pandora, once upon a goddamn lovely time.

A robot hand turned to a fist.

“I swear to God, Jack, if you try to fuck with me again…”

“Not this time.”

“—then I will really, really make you pay for it.”

“Oh, you will, huh?” Maybe Jack wouldn’t mind seeing that.

Rhys only growled a little, muttering something like stupid horny bastard under his breath as he started to push himself back up on the couch, only to have Jack tut in protest.

“No no, none of that. You’re gonna wanna be comfortable for this. Lay down, kick back, and lemme into that shiny chrome head of yours. I’ll take care of you. I’ll take very good care of you.”

And just like that, Jack could feel it. What Rhys saw and didn’t, that was for Jack to control. Well, for the most part. With an attempted stretch of his metaphorical hacking limbs, he could brush his fingers against barriers still left up. Smart on the little backstabber’s part, but ultimately temporary. He’d make sure of that.

Later, though. Definitely later. Right now, he had his crown for sex king to vindicate.

Coaxing Rhys to the state to best manipulate was met with little resistance. The state itself wasn’t dissimilar to a dream, except he would have the capability to wake up at any point, even if he wasn’t fully aware of that fact. From here, Jack could play. Create.

Nothing too extravagant, of course. The illusion couldn’t be broken. To Rhys, from the moment he closed his eyes, nothing changed. They were still in the Atlas facility, he was still sprawled out on the couch, the air was still stiflingly warm. Except now, instead of a blue hologram looming over him, Jack was in full glorious color, tangibility plain by the way his fingers snaked around to Rhys’s cheeks, stroking prominent bones with the pads of his thumbs.

The new CEO definitely had the starry eyed look of a dream, as if he’d just been woken up rather than put to bed. It was cute, doey like. Jack knew he couldn’t let it distract him too much.

He whispered, with all the eloquence in the world, “Hey.”

“Hi.”

Rhys was coming to pretty steadily, which the AI begrudgingly appreciated. He wouldn’t have minded keeping the awestruck look in place of the tiny smirk now forming while he fucked the guy senseless, but it was ultimately better this way. Probably.

With the increase of adaptability, Jack felt assured in letting one hand slowly coast down Rhys’s body, from neck to torso as he began to tug and pull at the waistcoat. Rhys’s shoulders tilted up so he could arch enough to shrug the whole thing off. The undershirt was—nice, with sleek tiny buttons that only kept the shirt together until halfway up the torso, both from the casual way Rhys liked to wear it and from Jack’s removal efforts. The tattoo that swirled from his neck was all the more showy here, and for a second all Jack could think about was pressing each thumb to that neck and squeezing. It was enough to make him grab at the belt with a special sort of enticement, sliding from chest to chest in favor of a better angle.

Rhys was actually snickering. Goddamn snickering. “You’re jumping right to it, huh?”

The AI was happy to shoot him a wink from between his legs. “Don’t see a reason to delay.”

“I feel like… like I should be kissing you or something.”

A masked nose wrinkled. “I wouldn’t go that far.”

And the kid started chuckling again. Jesus, it was obnoxiously infectious, too, but at least Jack was able to make it sexy, cupping a nice feel of what was beneath the material, in turn adding a nice and satisfying groan into the mix of quiet laughter.

Rhys was surprisingly nonplussed for such a rapid pace of events as the one Jack set. He actually looked in his element, and it occurred to the AI that now, maybe, Jack had made himself routine. It was an uncomfortable thought, so he was quick to replace it with much, much filthier ones.

As Jack tore Rhys’s pants down, careful to drag whatever stupid and colorful pattern of underwear he might be donning that would be sure to turn him off, he made sure to release an appreciative noise as the erection, already half hard, came into view. 

It’d be so easy to just take him then and there. Physics didn’t really need to come into play here, he wouldn’t need preparation or lube or anything. Hell, Jack could form a tentacle dick if he wanted. And while the idea definitely had some potential, The Plan needed realism.

So Jack would take his time, time that he utilized in the slow burn of Rhys’s anticipation, first and foremost. In those subsystems Jack had once familiarized into a second home, the kid was an open book. Likes, dislikes, anticipation and fear, each of it was palpable with the access he finally had his hands back on. It would have been intimate if either of them trusted the other in the least, but as it was? It at least made for good boning.

Anything could be simulated here, and to Jack’s delight, that included feeling. It was dodgy, synthetic, and ultimately a poor substitute, but he found that once his hands met with the soft, warm flesh of Rhys’s thigh, even fake was something. And when he felt the initial twitch of muscle caused by his own contact, the AI knew he was hooked in almost as much as Rhys. Coarse fingers were running up the flesh in no time, past the thigh and to the hips, under the half removed shirt while he squeezed and tightened with greed around parts that felt particularly sensational. The sounds that it elicited were too good to ignore.

“Oh, you have definitely thought about this, haven’t you?” The hard on Jack could spy as he continued feeling Rhys up was enough to confirm what he already knew. Obviously, the kid had idolized him, and whether or not that had been compromised, it wouldn’t erase the nights spent staring at numerous Hyperion issued posters, wishing for a handsome face to go down on him.

Rhys knew it too, or so was indicated by the, “For the love of God, Jack, just shut up,” muttered from behind his robotic hand, the same hand that Jack caught by the wrist with sudden keen interest. Despite the warm air around them, the metal was cool to the touch. 

Jack said, “Sit up.”

Maybe it was selfishness inspired by the mildest sensation of feeling, but Jack already had some ideas stirring. He pulled on Rhys’s arm in a none too gentle tug until the CEO complied with his order, then led it to his own pants. Lucky for him, even Rhys seemed to take the clue from that, and with the clanking of a buckle being overturned and a zipper being undone, Jack’s own erection was soon freed.

“Just the robot hand.”

Rhys nodded once, a healthy amount of trepidation in the grasp around the base of Jack’s cock that elicited a grunt of approval. Weird, definitely weird, but the cool temperature mixed with the strange texture of a goddamn robot hand created a strange amount of pleasure. And when it began to stroke up and down his shaft and create the friction he’d been gunning for, well, Jack found himself bracing back on his elbows and enjoying the ride.

None of what he was feeling was anything special, of course. It was nothing but a joint effort of what they both assumed any given thing would feel like. Yet here he was, grinding into his own created fantasy.

Before Jack could help himself, he realized he was hooking fingers around a disheveled collar and pulling Rhys close. Admirably, even with the release of a surprised noise, the chrome digits didn’t stop their stimulation, and Jack was treated to mismatched eyes gazing into his own.

They didn’t kiss. They definitely didn’t kiss. But with as close as they were, who could help a brief brush or two. That was—fine. It was over quickly enough and ultimately meant nothing.

That was how the whole thing went down, actually. Touches were utilitarian and efficient… everything was, for a lack of a better word, robotic. What they lacked in intimacy, however, they made up for with eagerness, and it took little coaxing before they were horizontal on the couch, rutting against each other until everything so neat and tidy unfolded in one moment of sloppy, reckless abandon. 

After that, they just took time to lay there, with no need to breathe and yet panting heavily all the same. Rhys finally opened his mouth to speak, then—

He awoke with a start, eyes snapping open to find the surreal dream shattered. Jack was gone, clothes were startlingly neat and, well, on, and his mind was swimming with disorientation. There was a hint of blue at the corner of his vision, then nothing.

He was too tired to regret this, at least for tonight. So he simply shifted onto his side, a face reddened by the events burrowing into the sheets. Had he managed to stay awake a little longer, he might have noticed the way Jack still lingered in the depths of his cybernetics, toying with one particularly faulty barrier discovered amidst the guarded passion.

It was a start. Towards—something, of exactly what Jack hadn’t hashed out yet. But it was an opening, a knick in the armor, a weakness exposed. For now, all he’d have to do was toy with it a little. A plan would come.

It always did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was /never/ supposed to take this long, but between a lot of personal stuff and a lot of mental stuff, things got carried away. Honestly though, I do wanna say just how indescribably encouraged I was by all your kind words and praises. You're what helped me push through, and I hope I don't disappoint any of you! Thanks so so so much for reading.


End file.
